


blood-spitting loyalty

by guiltylights



Series: and around the sun, we stand [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Listen I just have a lot of Feelings about Zoro and Luffy as crewmates, set in Thriller Bark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 05:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15574446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guiltylights/pseuds/guiltylights
Summary: Son of the devil,Zoro remembers calling him, tied up in the middle of a hot-baked field, hunger-starved and with anger and grudging admiration running along his bones,son of the devil.One day, you’re going to find something worth more to you than your own pride.





	blood-spitting loyalty

**Author's Note:**

> [Time started: 4th Aug 18, 11:27am;– ] 
> 
> This is a ficlet that doesn’t have much direction but I had to get out of my system.

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“One day, you’re going to find something worth more to you than your own pride,” Koshiro-sensei had told him, so many years ago. 

He hadn’t understood it, then. Sensei’s riddles had been puzzling at best and frustrating at worst, and he hadn’t had the patience nor the maturity to think about it, too frantic trying to be the best, the wooden swords clenched between baby teeth a declaration noisy in its fury, in its undeveloped tenacity. He had been young and angry, that much he knew – it was useless trying to pretend otherwise. To him, it hadn’t made any sense – in a world as vast and wide as it was, what else could matter more than what he could stamp into it, shouting his name into the sky?  _I am Roronoa Zoro, and I am going to become the greatest swordsman in the world._

Except that shouting never did anything for him but to remind him how little he actually mattered. He felt his own insignificance like a low hard weight pressed against his chest, and gritted his teeth against it, pressed harder, fought faster. Too young, too unskilled, too clumsy to mean anything. He felt that, more acutely than ever, when Kuina had looked down at him from the other end of a sword, he knocked flat on his back and breathless with exertion and rage, that first fight out of many; and for every single fight after that, too, all two-thousand-and-one of them, when Kuina’s swords rapped down faster, struck up harder, disarmed him easier than what he could comprehend, what he could react to. And every time, he spat the dirt from his mouth and got up. He hated to lose. He thrilled at the challenge. And it was those warring feelings that kept him pushing back, sweat on his back, heart and sword in his mouth, pride on the line. The first step to being the best.

And then Kuina had died, slipped down some stairs of all things, and things had stopped mattering. 

_You’re going to find something worth more to you than your own pride,_ Koshiro-sensei had told him, and he thought that this might be it. Backlit by the vivid flares of the orange setting sun, his sensei’s grief and resolution stamped frank across his face in the dying light, a resolution for not just one but two in his own mouth. He held it as carefully as the blade of a sword, as determinedly as his own life.  _I’ll become the greatest swordsman in the world._ He’ll do it for himself. He’ll do it for her. 

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Now, half-conscious and fully injured, hauling himself to his feet, Zoro thinks he finally understands, in its full weight, what his sensei meant. 

Bartholomew Kuma is an impossibly towering height above him, a hulking monster of a man half made of blood and bone and half of cruel circuitry, a man Zoro has learned he cannot defeat even if he is at full strength. There is something like desperation. There is something like daunt. Zoro pushes it all aside, feels instead a grim steady resolution settle along his shoulders.

_One day, you’re going to find something worth more to you than your own pride._ His captain is lying flat out on a slab of broken white stone, face slack and peaceful, sleeping oblivious to the danger of death’s door not two feet away from himself. From East Blue all the way to the Grand Line, Zoro has watched his captain bear miracles, again and again and again, devil’s luck in his bones and a child’s stupid tenacity in his cheer. It’s something he never thought he would see, when first agreeing to join his crew under coercion, that long time ago. _Son of the devil,_ Zoro remembers calling him, tied up in the middle of a hot-baked field, hunger-starved and with anger and grudging admiration running along his bones,  _son of the devil._ His captain, in this moment, looks impossibly young, yet Zoro knows that those boyish brown shoulders have borne the weight of tragedies, of sins, of villages and cities and whole countries and more – have borne the weight of hope, which perhaps is the heaviest burden to carry of them all. And he has yet to buckle. He has never buckled.

It’s not that his own dreams don’t matter anymore. It’s not that at all. Wadou Ichimonji is still a frank familiar weight at his side, a reminder of everything he has done, a reminder of what he has yet to do. Zoro still wants his name to reach the heavens, still wants to become the greatest swordsman in the world. There's no doubt that he will be. But there are also other things he wants to protect, outside of his own ambitions, outside of himself. So in the face of a shaky future, Zoro chooses to bet on the here and now.

His body is shivering from just holding himself upright.  _Someday, you’re going to find something worth more to you than your own pride_.

Zoro staggers to his feet. This is what he meant.

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**Author's Note:**

> These little one piece ficlets might become a thing. I am not too sure; but I do know I have a lot of emotions about all the characters in this universe, and my feelings need an outlet somewhere, so quite possibly… we’ll see. Zoro’s loyalty and devotion just gets to me, guys. 
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://guilty-lights.tumblr.com/), so come drop by and say hi if you wanna! If you liked the fic, please leave kudos or comments, too! They make me smile :>
> 
> [Time ended: 5th Aug 18, 6:52pm;– ]


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